simonhlilly

YEW AT LLANYMDDYFRI

I am a fire banked up.
No loud voice
No chanted, righteous psalms,
No holy threats.
Quietly I suck the dead,
Draw from what they no longer need.
Green leaves and slow, dark sap.
A skein of green dressed in veils of ivy.

Not large, not small,
I go on regarding, regardless.
My hymns are quiet,
A gravity for time and space
To dance around.

Disregard me.
I am as undistinguished
As you shall be
As you fall forgotten
Mixed with mud and misty memories.
But I shall see days you shall never know.

A stone’s throw from eternity’s grey walls.
Lived in by wrens, lived in by blackbirds,
Priest and brown sexton.
Banked up against the long hill,
The green valley cowled and shaded,
A cave for meditations.

—